Monday, July 19, 2010

Guest Editorial: Aphorisms for the SurveyorIn place of my editorial in this issue, I thought our readers would enjoy these words of wisdom shared by Dr. Dick Elgin. "For many years I have delivered to state surveyor association meetings a seminar on how to improve one's surveying business. Its current revision is based on my 36 years of ....Read the Article

Big Ship {Tight Squeeze} With a clearance of about 226 feet between Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW) and the span underside of San Francisco's Bay Bridge, there's usually plenty of room for the world's biggest ships to pass through on their way to the Port of Oakland. But ....Read the Article

Herr Niebuhr and the Remarkable Traverse So began a personal adventure that continues to this day. Who was this Carsten Niebuhr chap? This we know: Born March 17, 1733, he was a farmer in the moist marshlands of coastal northern Germany, a fellow first learning alphabets and mathematics at 22 years of age, a student .... Read the Article

The Largest Non-BLM Cadastral Retracement in History Maricopa County, Arizona, is the 14th largest county of roughly 2,950 counties in the country. It contains roughly 5,904,616 acres within its bounds, over 25 municipalities and communities and more than 3.5 million people who call it home. It is ....Read the Article

GIS Matters: The Power of Place Geographic Information Systems--the powerful combination of visualization tools and spatial data--are ubiquitous today. People use GIS for many applications such as online searches for retail sources of products and services, as navigational aids in cars, planes, and boats, for ....Read the Article

Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 4 We've been examining some of the pitfalls in surface modeling based on differing source information. The last article [Dec. 2009] dealt with the common errors associated with using drawn contours as source ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: Beating Axles into Plowshares As businesspeople, we have always been warned to diversify our clientele and services so that we don't suffer so badly when one client or one line of work no longer provides us the same (or any) income. But the fortunes of communities and cities often rise and fall due to a single ....Read the Comments

Survey Affidavit Of No ChangeMany professional land surveyors know all too well about the survey affidavit of no change, its negative effects on the surveying profession, and the impact it has on the public. If a land surveyor's primary duty is to safeguard life, health, property and promote the public welfare, then perhaps an ....Read the Article